A new beginning:
The Wisdom of The Prophet Muhammad

Although it seems a long while ago now, it is just over three years since I converted to Islam. Since my conversion, I admit there have been times of doubt, of questioning.

Yet one thing in particular has always ended my questioning and answered my doubts. This is the wisdom - the supreme practicality - I find in Islam. To me, Islam is simply the best guide to how we should live our lives, both as individuals, and as a community of individuals: it is the most noble way of living I have ever found.

It is not that I personally am without experience of life. For over three decades I pursued many and various ways of living: I have studied most if not all the major religions and philosophies of the world, and in my time have been a Christian monk, a Buddhist, a Taoist, a practitioner of classic Yoga (after Pantanjali) as well as a revolutionary street-activist of the ultra-nationalist kind.

One of the many things which initially drew me to Islam was the wisdom I found in the example of the Prophet Muhammad as recorded in the Sunnah. Before my own conversion to Islam I must admit that I had always regarded myself as intelligent, as I must also admit that I had arrogantly come to believe I had acquired the beginnings of wisdom and an understanding of what was required to create a noble society composed of good people. In particular, I had spent several years considering such ethical questions as the origin of the good and had concluded that the good was what was honourable. Indeed, I had begun to construct what I considered to be a new theory of ethics, built upon this concept of honour.

I had also come to believe, over a period of many years, that Western society had become decadent - unethical - as I was often sad (and sometimes angry) at the behaviour of some of my own people, especially their lack of manners, and their pride, manifest as this pride often was in an overwhelming egotism [a failure to be aware of their insignificance compared to Nature, the Cosmos, and God]. In particular, I found the rampant hedonism of the West - and the obsession with sex and self-indulgent pleasure - appalling. Many times I felt as if I did not belong in modern Western society with its hordes of young (and not so young) people intent on "having a good time" by indulging in alcohol and drugs and casual sex, and frequenting places and "parties" where they gyrated and contorted their bodies to loud music, often in an attempt to impress each other.

So it was that I discovered in Islam a more appealing, a more natural, a more honourable, way of life. I marvelled at the sensible Islamic rules governing personal behaviour: for example, the way in which modesty was enjoined for both men and women, and the requirement that men should not be alone with a woman in social or work situations, with a few exceptions which are exactly specified. This requirement removes most causes of temptation, and is astounding in its simplicity and its effectiveness just as it reveals a deep understanding of both human nature (or rather, human weakness) and the unhappiness and distress that such temptation, with its infidelity, its breach of trust, causes.

Islam is full of such insights, such simple rules and recommendations to guide us in our behaviour: rules and recommendations which do indeed make for a simple, peaceful but above all honourable and civilized life. But there is yet more, as I discovered, and as I have remembered every time doubts have arisen.

In particular, there is an acceptance, in Islam, that we can and should be happy, as we can and should be not only joyful but able to enjoy life, provided always that we choose the middle way, and do not go to extremes, and provided always that we give consideration to others. That is, there is no bleak, self-denying, austerity, as there is, for example, in both Christianity and Buddhism.

In brief, there is a quite astounding humanity in Islam: a humanity which has to be experienced to be known. This humanity is evident if one tries to live according to the will of Allah as made real to us by the example of the Prophet Muhammad. It is evident if one lives in, or even visits, an Islamic country. It is evident in the great and noble Islamic civilizations, such as that in Andalusia.
 

What I understood about Islam - and propelled me toward conversion - and what I always strive to remember about Islam, is that the wisdom so evident in the middle way which is Islam is far, far beyond what I once regarded as my own wisdom, my own understanding, and far beyond the wisdom, the understanding, shown by all the sages, all the religious teachers, all the philosophers, I have studied over a period of thirty or more years.

In truth, I came to believe there is something special here: something divine. That is, that the Way of Islam itself has been divinely given to us. I could not, before my conversion, understand how an ordinary man - the Prophet Muhammad - who could neither read nor write, could have devised such a noble, such a human, such a perfect, Way.

But there is yet more. This perfect, sublime, civilized, Way has actually been made real. That is, it has formed the basis, the essence, of a society, a civilization where people we re able to live as they can and should, as free, noble, honourable, human beings aware of their place in the Cosmos and their duties and obligations to other life, other human beings, and their own Creator.

The first such society was that established by the Prophet Muhammad in Medinah, a society which was itself to form the basis for the Khilafah: for the great, the noble, Islamic civilizations.

So it was that I (Alhamdulillah) converted to Islam, and so it is that I am and remain a Muslim.